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I've enjoyed this magazine for a decade viewing it with Adobe Reader V11 and DC. Going forward or backward one page, for me, is done using the mouse with the pointer mode "hand" (left click forward - right click backward) - that is the norm for using the landscape (Ctrl/L) mode in Adobe Reader, so using the arrow keys is not for me (thanks for providing that for an alternative). Were I to not use the mouse click for page navigation, I also have the "Page Up/Page Down" options from the keyboard.

I doubt I will ever be using the mobile (smart fart phone) to view, but then who knows, we are all adaptable.

It remains to be seen if I can view in pseudo-landscape with the portrait editions.

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth" - a freebie is "pays yer money - gets yer choice".

Keep up the high quality pub, but treat yourself well, Joe.

So you are using different software to publish the magazine. Doe

So you are changing the software you use to publish the magazine. Does this mean that I will have to install an Affinity Reader app or will magazines published with the new software be compatible with Adobe Reader?

You are discontinuing the MRH app. Doesn't bother me. I didn't even know it existed.

Publishing in portrait mode does bother me. Nothing like having a photo or track plan on two different pages that cannot be put side by side. For instance the K10 track plan this month cannot be viewed as a single picture using Adobe Reader in the pseudo-landscape mode as you described. Can it in with the Affinity software? If you are going to publish just one mode why not landscape?

Are you going under?

Adobe Portrait

It appears that the dual page format does not work if the cover is combined with the next page.  For this to work the cover needs to be on the page by itself.  I have seen this in other publications as well.

Dan

Landscape is still available

The change will be for July and beyond, folks. When going to Portrait, I believe there is some accommodation for dual page viewed with Adobe Reader in dual page mode, if I understood the article correctly.

To get Portrait cover where it belongs

In Adobe Reader, to get the cover to show on its own page, set Adobe Reader as shown below. The secret is the Show Cover Page in Two Page View setting -- make sure that is checked.

This solves it, and moves the cover onto its own page, and then the rest of the facing pages line up as in the landscape edition.

The magazine will still be PDF

Affrinity... Yes!

As a retired photographer and current fine art photo artist I can attest to the value of the Affinity suite of programs. Early on I bought into the Affinity Photo program. Currently I own them all. I produce books of my photography with them and have not regretted leaving the bloated programs of Adobe, not to mention the cost.

There is, however, a learning curve. Things are the same, but different. Anyone who's owned a British sports car will know what I mean.

I recommend the suite of Affinity tutorials. They are well done and there are many of them to help with most aspects of the tools. I once asked a question about a technique on the forum and within 24 hours had an answer and a few days later there was a video on the procedure. Try that with Adobe where just finding the path for help is a problem.

Cutting down on the versions? No problem. It's all about the content!

I remember the landscape

I remember the landscape version was going to be discontinued several years ago, then Mr. Fugate discovered (and reported) that it wasn't all that difficult to provide both. I wonder what's changed during the ensuing years to make landscape so hard to do.

Waiting to see what portrait looks like with a skeptical eye...

Gonna miss landscape

You gotta do what you gotta do to save time and money, sounds like you’re making the right tough choices.

I will miss landscape mode though - there’s no alternative to fake a landscape mode on a tablet, and I do all my MRH/RE reading on an ipad.

We got a LOT smaller

We suddenly got a lot smaller with the layoffs. As to how soon we might bring those folks back, who knows. We’re optimizing cost and and effort big time right now.

Also, back in the day we only had one magazine (MRH), but now we have two (MRH and Running Extra) magazines and dropping the landscape edition plus dropping the arrows now cuts our rollout and corrections sync effort by 75% ... which is significant.

scrolling

I have been a reader of MRH since issue 1. In fact I was reading the layout blog before there was MRH. I have dropped all my digital mags and gone to paper because they are to hard to read with all the scrolling and the print is too small. MRH had the landscape and arrows which was easy to navigate. Without that I will likely not read it any more, certainly extra. I will try 1 issue. Maybe we can now have page numbers.

My plea for only keeping the landscape version

TL:DR; Ditchthe portrait mode version, keep only landscape. Embrace digital media, don't be limited by the constraints of physical print anymore.

I completely understand why Joe and team are tightening their belt and are reducing the amount of effort it takes to publish the magazine. But I am baffled by why the landscape one is going away and not the portrait one.

I always always download the landscape version because all of my computer screens have a wider resolution than a tall resolution. Even with the old CRT screens the format was 4:3, majority of computer screens are 16:9 now or some other form of landscape. Yes, phone screens are typically held in portrait mode but don't we all lament those folks making videos in portrait mode? Those pesky portrait mode videos we can't properly see without ugly black bars next to them on our TVs, phone (while embedded on a web page) or computer?

The one thing I dislike more than vertical scrolling is having to horizontal scroll. So if I read MRH on my phone I rotate my phone into landscape mode and zoom in just enough so that I can: a) read it, andb) only have to vertical scroll.

Yes I understand that I can set Acrobat into two page view to get my landscape mode but it is not the same as a single landscape page with seamless pictures all across the entire screen. Like in this month's magazine, the large layout plan, how would that have been pasted up across 2 pages? By removing the gutters and hope for the best people will setup side-by-side view and the PDF viewer makes the pages seem seamless? 99.99% of images/photographs in the magazine are landscape mode. Keeping only the portrait mode magazine would artificially limit you in how you can show detailed photographs. You'd have to resort to cropping images into portrait mode to get at least some context in the cropped image and avoid excessive white space around the image in the magazine. But white space could be text wrapped around an image? Yes, but it would defeat much of the reason to make the crop, as the image resolution will be limited in the horizontal plane and thus limit the subject you can show. By going "landscape only" you avoid this, gain the flexibility of publishing any photo in full page spread landscape mode without the need for users to go into non-default view modes in Acrobat to see it. Yes, this would be at the expense of forcing phone (e-reader) users to rotate their screen (like they already do when watching any video) when reading the magazine, unless they don't mind horizontal scrolling...

Physical media print is mostly portrait mode for 2 reasons: 1) the wider the publication, the more difficult it is to hold for a longer period of time due to arm fatigue; 2) if the format would be 2 facing landscape pages, the spine would be relatively weak and causes the pages to sag (magazine/folder) or pull (hard bound). MRH is digital, we can ditch those old concepts because we don't have those constraints, in fact by holding on to the old axiom of print format you use those constraints to add even more constraints rather than using the opportunities the digital representation could give you.

PS: yes I recognize that the physical print versions will need work if MRH goes all landscape. But should we go for lowest common denominator here or do we aim for the majority of readers?

PPS: I don't read the web version often because the format irritates me how it tries to mimic physical print. I can't for example as quickly page through an edition as I can in the PDF.

Maybe I'm the oddball out here?

Yaron

You are not the only one. I overwhelmingly prefer landscape.

A quick preference poll would be useful.

Landscape

Joe didn’t cut out Landscape because he dislikes it, it is a cost thing. I can respect that as he has always seemed to be above board with us. I just hope MRH the freebie can survive.

Tom

As best I can recall all the

As best I can recall all the previous arguments (no, I'm not going to go look them up), portrait was selected because MRH was read much more on portrait-based screens (read "phones" I guess) than on landscape screens (computer monitors and tablets).

If they have to choose only one, I guess portrait makes sense for that reason.

But along with several others who have posted, I strongly prefer landscape. It looks great on my 25 inch monitor, and portrait OR landscape looks crappy on my tiny little smartphone (scrolling around when reading just disrupts the flow too much, and I want to be able to see detail in photos without zooming all to hell all the time).

I'll wait and see how portrait looks on my monitor, but as I said above, I'm skeptical that it will be as close to landscape as has been alluded to. 

Landscape vs. Portrait...

Thank you Joe for many years of what I consider to be the best overall model railroad magazine published, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. My choice has always been Landscape... I don't "read online," but always download the landscape PDF version. As for me, the landscape format has been one of the factors that has made MRH/RE a true digital magazine and one of the things that sets it apart from the rest of the field. I will certainly continue to be an MRH/RE subscriber in whatever format is available, but I would prefer that format be landscape.

landscape for me

I completely disagree with the decision to move to portrait only. i have been reading MRH since it started. I don't use a cell phone, and think that providing this just to cater to the cell phone users is just wrong. Why does everyone think they have to live their life on a frikin cell phone. Where has the common sense gone? Its a frikin magazine. Please go back to making the landscape version. if you want to tighten your belt, drop the portrait version. I think this is a sad excuse to say your tightening your belt. Nuff said.

Pissed off Randy

Not sure it matters?

If I  go to get current issue and click on the portrait looking version I can still read it fine on my chromebook. Clicking on full screen makes it even more readable. ....DaveB

Much ado about nothing

This is much ado about nothing ... here is the Portrait edition on Windows 10 made to look like the landscape edition. Do you see a difference?

Youtube video link: 

Notice this is for a Windows 10 PC, looks virtually identical to me. Mad the arrows are gone? This gives you clickable arrow keys on the screen. Wow, the angst over nothing!

We will be providing recipes for various devices on how to get Portrait to look virtually identical to landscape.

Trust me folks, this is much ado about nothing. It saves us a ton and there's virtually no difference once you know the little tricks.

Joe

I must have missed it so please excuse if it has already been explained. Why is the landscape more expensive to produce than the portrait?

@RandallG

Doesn't matter, PCs and Macs can also get a landscape-identical view with the portrait edition. Easy peasy. 

Watch the video above ... This is Windows 10. If you're on an older version of Windows, we will be providing recipes for those as well to get the landscape-identical look.

As I say in the video, this is much ado about nothing as to end user experience and if you're concerned we will be providing recipe videos for almost every configuration and how to get the virtually landscape-identical look with the portrait edition.

Video?

All it shows or me is:

http://www.youtube.com’s server IP address could not be found.

 Moderator: Can you type it in directly? If your computer is telling you that it can't find youtube.com, you've got more, and different problems than the changing formats. 

Long winded technical explanation

Okay you asked for it, here is the long-winded technical explanation.

First, on a tablet or a phone, the portrait edition looks a lot better if you hold the device vertically and almost 40% of our readers read us first on these devices, so we can't just "drop" the portrait edition.

Second, you can get the portrait edition to look virtually identical to the landscape edition with the right viewing settings and free viewing software, so there's little real need for landscape and portrait. Just a couple tricks and everyone will be off and running with their preferred landscape view of the portrait edition.

Since 40% of our readers potentially might want to sometimes view in portrait mode on a mobile device (tablet or phone), we start with the pasteup using portrait pages and we set the page editor to do facing pages, so the pages look like the landscape view when we build the magazine.

While building the magazine, I need to make both a landscape and a portrait edition cover. Each cover takes about 1 hour to build, format, tweak, and review with the staff.

1. Landscape edition cover of MRH + render + staff review - 1 hour.
2. Portrait edition cover of MRH + render + staff review - 1 hour.
3. Landscape edition cover of Running Extra + render + staff review - 1 hour.
4. Portrait edition cover of Running Extra + render + staff review - 1 hour.

Sometimes we don't have a photo that works well for both editions, so I have to alter the photo to add sky or add scenery to get something that will work for both. That can take up to 2 more hours of tedious work in Photoshop (now Affinity Photo) to get something that looks natural.

Once the magazine is done, I have to generate separate versions.

- Landscape edition of Running Extra: pull out just MRH pages for landscape MRH and save. - 15 minutes
- Copy Landscape edition of MRH to portrait and convert it - 45 minutes.*
- Copy Landscape edition of Running Extra to portrait and convert it - 45 minutes.*
- Convert Portrait edition of MRH to online edition - 10 minutes.

* This involves replacing all the footer masters, which is just a couple minutes. Next, I need to delete the landscape cover and put a portrait cover in its place and reposition/rescale all the cover teases, which takes a bit of time. Then I need to go to doc setup and change it so the first page starts on pasteup page 1 not 2. Next I need to delete page 2 (the other half of the old landscape cover that's now no longer needed). Then I need to flip through the issue page by page looking for pasteup components moving around in the Z dimension (objects that used to be on top move to the bottom and become hidden behind other objects). Just hope I don't miss anything (I have and believe me I hear about it).

Once all the versions have been built, then they need rendered.

Each version render takes about 6 minutes.

1. Landscape edition render of MRH - 6 mins.
2. Portrait edition render of MRH - 6 mins.
3. Landscape edition render of Running Extra - 6 mins.
4. Portrait edition render of Running Extra - 6 mins.
5. Online edition render of MRH - 20 mins. (both PDF and HTML5 files to be rendered).

In the future we plan to build a login site with a paywall for Running Extra, so we will be making an online version of Running Extra as well, so that ads another 30 min + 45 min to all this, or another 1hr 15 min.

So all told adding up all the numbers ...

Total process - ~6.5 hours

(Once we add the online version of Running Extra behind a paywall, the total becomes 7.75 hours)

Once we have all these editions, they all need to be uploaded.

1. Landscape edition MRH upload - 5 mins.
2. Portrait edition MRH upload - 5 mins.
3. Landscape edition Running Extra upload (store + SendOwl) - 10 mins.
4. Portrait edition Running Extra upload (store + SendOwl) - 10 mins.
5. Online edition MRH upload - 20 mins.

Total uploads - 50 mins.

Grand total: ~7.5 hours.  (or 8.6 hrs with the online edition of RE as well)

Once generated and uploaded, then we start watching for error reports. If an error report comes in, I have to open up all five versions in the pasteup editor and make corrections. Then I have to regenerate and reupload all five versions. 

Needless to say at this point, we hope no bad errors get found, because then we have massive changes to make across five different versions of magazine, which can take hours.

We found one such problem this time in the June issue and it took 4 hours to sync all the changes across all the versions.

In contrast, by going with just the Portrait edition, we will end up with one version of MRH to build and maintain and one version of Running Extra. We can also drop the unique online edition, the portrait edition works fine as is.

Grand total becomes ~1.5 hours.

Rollout savings: 6 hours per month. Correction sync savings -- huge.

And if errors are found in the MRH portion, I only have two versions to sync, not five (or eventually six).

Plus, the more versions made and to keep in sync, the more the mental load around release and applying corrections, and the greater the chance of making mistakes. Frankly, there's no reason to maintain all these versions when with just showing everyone a couple tricks, the portrait edition can look just like the landscape edition .

Remember, you asked.

Try it now